Police found on Friday the bodies of two men who went missing on the northernmost main island of Hokkaido and several more bodies in Iwate Prefecture after a powerful typhoon battered the area earlier this week.
The death toll has now been raised to 14, but the number of fatalities may increase as search operations for those unaccounted for have expanded in areas where roads were impassable until Thursday.
In Hokkaido, police and firefighters were searching for three missing people including one whose car was recovered from a river in Taiki after Typhoon Lionrock ripped through northern and northeastern Japan on Tuesday.
The bodies of the two men were found in the towns of Taiki and Shintoku. The whereabouts of the third missing man in the town of Shimizu remain unknown, while police reported that another man in the same town was unaccounted for.
In Iwate, about 1,100 people remain stranded including in the town of Iwaizumi, where nine bodies were found in a nursing home. The prefectural government said most of them were elderly people who lived in the facility.
Water has been cut off in Iwaizumi, one of the hardest-hit areas, forcing about 740 residents to evacuate from their homes.
Iwate saw road damage due to mudslides, with some of its roads blocked by fallen trees. Train tracks were also blocked by fallen trees, hampering freight train services linking Hokkaido to Japan’s main island of Honshu.
Following the extensive damage in Hokkaido and the Tohoku region in northeastern Japan, Sanae Takaichi, the internal affairs minister, said at a news conference she will urge all municipalities to review by the end of this year their disaster prevention plans to better prepare for future natural calamities.
Meanwhile, another typhoon, the 12th of the season, is approaching the Amami region in Kagoshima Prefecture and southern Kyushu, both in southwestern Japan, from Saturday through Sunday and may make landfall near the Kyushu area, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
JT
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